Encyclopedia of the

Colonialism and Neocolonialism - Colonial america

Probably no region under colonial administration received more
considerate treatment by the mother country than Great Britain's
colonies in North America, partly because they were peopled in the main
by British subjects transplanted for the purpose of developing raw
materials and markets for England. Where a colonial administration was
imposed on an already existing and alien population, treatment of the
native residents was less benign and generally considered more degrading
by those thus possessed, depending on their level of civilization and
organization at the time of conquest or occupation. For example, in the
areas where Islamic or Asian culture, religion, and laws had existed for
a thousand or more years there was often fierce resistance to being
subjected to colonial status, whereas in parts of Central Africa, New
Guinea, and Borneo, where the native inhabitants were less developed in
an economic and material sense, the resistance was less prolonged or
nonexistent.

If the American colonists were treated more as equals than most, they
also resented more than most that they were not accorded exactly equal
status with Englishmen who had not emigrated to the colonies. Therefore,
when they rebelled and gained their independence, they had a particular
dislike for the very concept of colonialism. Representatives of the new
United States wrote their prejudices into the Constitution in 1789,
insisting that new acquisitions must become states after securing
sufficient population and complying with the laws of the land. This
anticolonialism continued as the preeminent view of Americans and their
government until the end of the nineteenth century when the new manifest
destiny seized the popular imagination and propelled the United States
into the race for colonies.

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